Thursday, Midnight.1
I have already written to you once or twice to-day, & so I am not going to write you now—but I can’t resist the temptation to simply say Good-night, & that I love you, darling—because I do love you, Livy—you know I do—you know it perfectly well you little rascal. Just back from Rev. Mr. Trumbull’s—nobody was there but Twichell & Gov. Hawley & me—Post man2 was obliged to be absent. We have had a y royal time. I have laughed till I feel all tired out. You never heard so many stories told in one evening. There was only one drawback. Mrs. Trumbull kept her little [cheer children] present all the evening, & of course they were fidgetty (the youngest was, at [lest least], & kept everybody uneasy for fear it would break its neck [climbing] around.3 [in top margin: Whose Livy? Livy?—Livy!] Now I did say to myself, five or six times, during the evening, “I can’t keep a diary, & yet I’ll want to run a paragraph into an article, some day, about the abomination inappropriateness & general disagreeableness of mixing infants into grown people’s entertainments, & I shall want it [to] read vividly & fresh, & so of course it must be written now, while it is hot, & laid away for use—& so I’ll inflict [is it] all on poor Livy as soon as ever I get home, & set it forth in all its malignity & its virulence, & ask her to s lay that page by somewhere so that I can call for it when I want it—[in top margin: What a darling it is!] & so, by making Livy my diary, I can secure two valuable birds with one stone, viz., I can write the things necessary without its being irksome, because they will be written for the dearest little body in the universe; & 2d, I shall have a diary who will always know where to put her hand on the document entrusted to her, which is a thing I never could do, &c, &c, &c,”—[in margin: Livy, Livy, Livy.]
But now the spirit of it is all gone—& I feel only [kindnessliness] toward the pleasant mother & charity toward the young [blockheads] that were a nuisance without knowing it—& so there is nothing for the diary, Livy dear. [in top margin: Livy, I love you.] But on the contrary I have said just exactly enough to entitle me to a scolding, & I’m morally bound to get it. But the reproof will come from such dear lips that I shall not know it is a reproof, thinking it a blessing. ‸(How’s [thim?)‸ [{You] know it is wasting time to scold me, Livy, because I love everything you say, rebukes, abuse, & compliments alike.)] [in margin: I love you, Livy.]
There are two hundred & twenty-four illustrations in the book, Livy.4 As I told you, the first edition ‸of the book‸ will be 20,000 copies, & it will take the whole force of the paper mill four weeks to make a good while (maybe longer—the man don’t know, yet,) to make that amount of paper—for the weight of the same is over thirty tons.
Must go to bed—but ain’t sleepy—simply obeying Livy’s orders. God bless my own little darling.
Sam.
Livy dear, please send me that mutilated copy of the Jumping Frog of mine, if it is there5—send by express, not mail. It has writing in it & would require letter postage.—& it is considered improper to break the law. When you mark the [Beecher] sermons, you must always put 2 or 3 stamps on them.1
[on back of page 1:] Oh dear me suz! how I do love you, Livy!
Miss Olivia L. Langdon | Elmira | New York. [postmarked:] hartford conn. may 15 [docketed by OLL:] 70th
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
Source text(s):Previous publication:
L3, 231–32; LLMT 359, brief paraphrase.
Provenance:See Samossoud Collection, p. 586.
Emendations and textual notes:
bed, • bed[,] [The comma is written off the torn edge of the page onto the next page, where it appears in the position of an apostrophe between the last two letters of ‘want’ at 231.16.]
cheer children • cheerildren
lest least • lestast
climbing • climbling
is it • ist
kindnessliness • kind-| nessliness
blockheads • block-|heads
thim?){You • thim?)—|{You
{You . . . alike.) • [sic]
Beecher •
Beeche[
]
[torn]
